TromboneChat

I was looking at the flute family and saw the Hyperbass. This made me wonder has anyone created a Hyperbass Trombone, but after searching google I couldn't find anything, so if anyone has any ides then please share.

There is the Contrabass trombone, but in my mind, you're thinking of like a subcontrabass trombone. Given how unwieldy a contrac already is, I can't imagine a subcontra would be any easy to build hold, or play

I think the lowest member of the trombone family is the contrabass in BBb with FF valve. An octave below the F-attachment tenor.

There is a limit to how low you can go. Human hearing generally goes from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Bb 2nd line of the bass clef is 116 Hz. Pedal Bb is therefore 58 Hz. Pedal Bb of the BBb bass is 29Hz (this would be Double Pedal Bb on a tenor. Note that we are approaching the lower limit of hearing (which would be the E below that Bb).

Playing below 20Hz will cause your audience to not hear what you have to play.

BGuttman wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 7:51 pm I think the lowest member of the trombone family is the contrabass in BBb with FF valve. An octave below the F-attachment tenor.

There is a limit to how low you can go. Human hearing generally goes from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Bb 2nd line of the bass clef is 116 Hz. Pedal Bb is therefore 58 Hz. Pedal Bb of the BBb bass is 29Hz (this would be Double Pedal Bb on a tenor. Note that we are approaching the lower limit of hearing (which would be the E below that Bb).

Playing below 20Hz will cause your audience to not hear what you have to play.

but in a orchestra you might want the audience to feel sound.

Tubas have been made in that range. You do hear the lowest notes, but you're only hearing the overtones.



I doubt it would be possible to build a playable subcontrabass trombone, unless it had a quadruple slide.

The F contrabass trombone has minimum 12´ of tubing, excluding the slide and valves, and the B♭ double-slide contrabass has 18´ of tubing, so an octave below that would require the 36´ that the Reisentuba subcontrabass tuba posted above uses.

The mere existence of the word "hyperbass" is because of the somewhat silly historical woodwind instrument nomenclatures, especially in the flute family. It denotes the octave below the "subcontrabass" (or "octocontrabass") range, i.e. two octaves below the contrabass. This is because a "bass" flute in C with a lowest note of C₃ (or B₂) is really only barely a tenor flute at best, and a proper bass flute, capable of a bass tessitura down to F₂ or C₂, is actually called a "contra-alto" or "contrabass" flute. Actual contrabass flutes, capable of the octave lower than C₂, are variously called "subcontrabass" flutes; the "double contra-alto" to F₁ and the "double contrabass" or "octocontrabass" to C₁. All of that to invent a word implying a range lower than the subcontrabass octave (C₀ - B₀), which as noted above is already all-but inaudible, which would be C₋₁ - B₋₁ at which point we're into countable beats.

So a hypothetical "hyperbass" trombone, playing in this inaudible sub-subcontrabass octave of C₋₁ - B₋₁ would actually need to be two octaves below the B♭ double-slide contrabass trombone, requiring 72´ of tubing plus probably servo motors to drive a quadruple slide. Perhaps we could weld it onto the Queen Mary's funnel for use as a fog horn...

jonathanharker wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 11:06 pm Perhaps we could weld it onto the Queen Mary's funnel for use as a fog horn...

And this, perhaps, is the best answer to the question "Why would you want such an instrument?" Even then, there's not much motivation since the Queen Mary was "retired from the sea" in 1967 and now serves as a tourist attraction and hotel at a dock in Long Beach, CA, and has little need of a fog horn.

BGuttman wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 7:51 pm I think the lowest member of the trombone family is the contrabass in BBb with FF valve. An octave below the F-attachment tenor.

There is a limit to how low you can go. Human hearing generally goes from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.

Yes when we're kids. I could certainly hear the flyback whine on an old tube TV, that's 15,734 Hz.

Now my audiology chart shows sharp decline after 4,000 Hz, and not much left after 8,000.

Remember, that 20-20,000 Hz range is an average. There are people with ranges higher and lower, wider and narrower. My hearing has suffered a major drop at around 5,000 Hz, too. Women tend to have higher range and men lower. Maybe that partially explains why the girls gravitate to flute in such numbers.

jonathanharker wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 11:06 pm The F contrabass trombone has minimum 12´ of tubing, excluding the slide and valves, and the B♭ double-slide contrabass has 18´ of tubing, so an octave below that would require the 36´ that the Reisentuba subcontrabass tuba posted above uses...So a hypothetical "hyperbass" trombone, playing in this inaudible sub-subcontrabass octave of C₋₁ - B₋₁ would actually need to be two octaves below the B♭ double-slide contrabass trombone, requiring 72´ of tubing plus probably servo motors to drive a quadruple slide. Perhaps we could weld it onto the Queen Mary's funnel for use as a fog horn...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbass_flute this one not an octocontrabass.

Yes I know, I rewrote most of that article.

B-flat contrabass trombone is already a kind of a nightmare, I can't imagine playing a trombone longer than that.